Quote from: LordBP on February 06, 2023, 05:26:47 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:12:29 PM

Quote from: Lurkndog on January 30, 2023, 02:46:52 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 30, 2023, 12:25:54 PM
Bows only work in specific circumstances, e.g., scores of bowmen against a marching army, or shoot and run tactics. These are NOT the types of combat you see in dungeons (bows would be terrible in dungeons BTW).

Historically, dungeon crawls don't exist, and conflict is typically out in the open, maybe in a field, or maybe in a forest.

And practically, a standard dungeon with corridors ten feet wide and ten feet tall is spacious enough to use bows and spears in. It might not be ideal, but if I saw five guys with spears marching side by side down a corridor at me, I'd leave immediately.

An actual cave, though? No, I wouldn't even take a spear or a bow into a cave. Too narrow, you might not even be able to get a spear through some twisty places.

Edit: Hell, I probably couldn't get myself through some of the places I went caving as a much younger man.

Yup, agreed, but D&D does dungeons crawls.

Also, longbows in Moldvay can reach up to 100 feet with no penalty. I d'ont see this working in a long corridor and, even in the open, I doubt it would be hard to dodge a missile if you can spot the single archer shooting a single target 100 feet away.

Spears are a different thing IMO. A short spear might work better than a swung weapons in cave...

You would have about half a second to dodge a longbow at 100 feet and it's a pretty flat trajectory for that 100 feet, so might work in a 10x10 corridor.

Good luck even seeing the arrow until it's about five feet away.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 02:58:28 PM
Not to mention I do not believe 1 hit = 1 kill to be true for bows; I think daggers are at least as deadly and I bet I can stab three or more times for every arrow.

Even police training IIRC teaches daggers are incredibly dangerous against GUNS if you are, say, 10 feet apart, due to taking a fraction of a second to draw and shoot. Bows take much longer.

Well, modern games model this by having some downside to shooting a bow if you are threatened in melee.  Perhaps you have a -2 to hit, or a -4 to hit.  Or perhaps the enemy gets a free swing at you, or you roll twice and take the worst.  These same games normally have some way around that though, above and beyond simply not being in melee in the first place.

It's certainly true that versus a hit point dummy you'd do much better with a dagger or a sword than a bow or a gun.  I'd say you'd probably outdamage a battle rifle with just a long knife in that case.  This is, in some real case, the issue of the game having to model a lot more- a combatant is much more than a sack of meat points, after all, and if someone is trying to stab you to death you will be able to slow them down (or sometimes even turn the tide) by interacting with the melee weapon, even unarmed.  While there are certainly cases of people catching arrows here and there, generally the ability to interact with a projectile is lower.

This is why D&D games model a combat round as a series of melee attacks.  If you get to roll three attack dice, it's not because you only swung three times, it's because you had a chance at three telling blows.  If you wanted to extend this to arrows, your only change would be to have the player roll a d4 every shot and find out how many total arrows were expended for that shot.

From a perspective of a game that isn't necessarily about a weapon die, but does still have the idea of hit points, work out:
If your game allows players to move around and hold absolute positions, figure out how much damage a token that is able to close to melee can do in a round, and figure out how much damage a token that holds at range and shoots arrows should do in a round.  If the play of the game frequently allows tokens to close distances with greater propensity than opening gaps, then these values should be close; if the game frequently allows tokens to stay at long distances, then these values should be disparate, with a greater share of damage granted to the melee attacker
If your game has much more abstract location, longer rounds, and likely predeclared actions, then again try to figure out how many rounds force a melee-specialist to engage at range before he closes to melee, and how in-control of these values would be a member of a historic scouting party in a military, or an optimized adventuring team, and try to come up with numbers around these.

D&D's method isn't particularly realistic, but it's easy enough to nerf it if it feels unbalanced.  In many cases, you can simply remove some of the buffs, depending on the version you run.

Quote from: LordBP on February 06, 2023, 05:26:47 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:12:29 PM

Quote from: Lurkndog on January 30, 2023, 02:46:52 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 30, 2023, 12:25:54 PM
Bows only work in specific circumstances, e.g., scores of bowmen against a marching army, or shoot and run tactics. These are NOT the types of combat you see in dungeons (bows would be terrible in dungeons BTW).

Historically, dungeon crawls don't exist, and conflict is typically out in the open, maybe in a field, or maybe in a forest.

And practically, a standard dungeon with corridors ten feet wide and ten feet tall is spacious enough to use bows and spears in. It might not be ideal, but if I saw five guys with spears marching side by side down a corridor at me, I'd leave immediately.

An actual cave, though? No, I wouldn't even take a spear or a bow into a cave. Too narrow, you might not even be able to get a spear through some twisty places.

Edit: Hell, I probably couldn't get myself through some of the places I went caving as a much younger man.

Yup, agreed, but D&D does dungeons crawls.

Also, longbows in Moldvay can reach up to 100 feet with no penalty. I d'ont see this working in a long corridor and, even in the open, I doubt it would be hard to dodge a missile if you can spot the single archer shooting a single target 100 feet away.

Spears are a different thing IMO. A short spear might work better than a swung weapons in cave...

You would have about half a second to dodge a longbow at 100 feet and it's a pretty flat trajectory for that 100 feet, so might work in a 10x10 corridor.

Half a second? I reckon the "taking the arrow, drawing the bow process, release, travel 100 feet" process would take a lot longer than that, allowing me more than enough time to take cover if not dodge. Especially if I had a shield.

Of course, if the attackers is hidden I'm probably dead against a dagger OR bow... although I would prefer a bow, since if he misses I'll have some time to react. Also, how many times can one stab in a second?

Anyway, that shouldn't be hard to test by someone like shadiversity or lindybeige.

My experience with bows and daggers, as I've said, is limited, although I do think daggers are MUCH easier to hit in my experience.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 06, 2023, 04:25:43 PM
I felt that I could have that character become a new campaign NPC, say after getting 3 levels higher than the party average

Maybe your tables are quite different than mine, but a PC becoming an NPC is usually not something the PC desires, especially if they get there by doing really well.  A PC that gains extra experience because he's very dexterity focused, while picking a simple class like thief, with a favorable XP table, and then is expert at gathering gold that the party would otherwise miss, could definitely be three levels ahead, depending on the version, especially if the party chooses weightier classes.  This seems like it would punish a PC who has done everything correctly, instead of rewarding them, as extra XP is meant to do (and rarely does) and as extra stats actually do (but get all wonky).

too much complexity and not enough depth
Back when I played AD&D avidly, I knew all the strengths from 10 to 21 and their relevant +hit and +damage modifiers.  My players normally only knew the ones that mattered to them.  It wasn't particularly complex, though it was, in retrospect, rather dumb.  At the time, I had faith that these numbers were tested well and tuned appropriately for what they should be capable of in the real world and also how difficult they are to achieve in the game.

Nowadays, I don't think the table is too complex, I think it's generally too powerful.  An 18/00 fighter has a statistical advantage on landing blows that is very substantial, and the extra damage on strike also scales too high.  Obviously, such a fighter is meant to be a rare treat for a player, as they will be generated very rarely, but that alone creates a problem should such a powerful man fall in combat; the player knows he will likely not get to play such a beast again in that game (or any game with the character generation rules mostly as written).

Quote from: Venka on February 06, 2023, 07:48:02 PM

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 06, 2023, 04:25:43 PM
I felt that I could have that character become a new campaign NPC, say after getting 3 levels higher than the party average

Maybe your tables are quite different than mine, but a PC becoming an NPC is usually not something the PC desires, especially if they get there by doing really well.  A PC that gains extra experience because he's very dexterity focused, while picking a simple class like thief, with a favorable XP table, and then is expert at gathering gold that the party would otherwise miss, could definitely be three levels ahead, depending on the version, especially if the party chooses weightier classes.  This seems like it would punish a PC who has done everything correctly, instead of rewarding them, as extra XP is meant to do (and rarely does) and as extra stats actually do (but get all wonky).

too much complexity and not enough depth
Back when I played AD&D avidly, I knew all the strengths from 10 to 21 and their relevant +hit and +damage modifiers.  My players normally only knew the ones that mattered to them.  It wasn't particularly complex, though it was, in retrospect, rather dumb.  At the time, I had faith that these numbers were tested well and tuned appropriately for what they should be capable of in the real world and also how difficult they are to achieve in the game.

Nowadays, I don't think the table is too complex, I think it's generally too powerful.  An 18/00 fighter has a statistical advantage on landing blows that is very substantial, and the extra damage on strike also scales too high.  Obviously, such a fighter is meant to be a rare treat for a player, as they will be generated very rarely, but that alone creates a problem should such a powerful man fall in combat; the player knows he will likely not get to play such a beast again in that game (or any game with the character generation rules mostly as written).

And he will tell the tales of the exploits of his Fighter for years to come, to everyone that will listen (and some that wouldn't), more than once.

You make it seem like it's a bad thing when it's not.

"Realism."

Don't make me backstab some of you with a ballista.

Quote from: Venka on February 06, 2023, 07:48:02 PM

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 06, 2023, 04:25:43 PM
I felt that I could have that character become a new campaign NPC, say after getting 3 levels higher than the party average

... but a PC becoming an NPC is usually not something the PC desires, especially if they get there by doing really well. ... This seems like it would punish a PC who has done everything correctly, instead of rewarding them, as extra XP is meant to do (and rarely does) and as extra stats actually do (but get all wonky).

too much complexity and not enough depth
...
Nowadays, I don't think the table is too complex, I think it's generally too powerful.  An 18/00 fighter has a statistical advantage on landing blows that is very substantial, and the extra damage on strike also scales too high.  Obviously, such a fighter is meant to be a rare treat for a player, as they will be generated very rarely, but that alone creates a problem should such a powerful man fall in combat; the player knows he will likely not get to play such a beast again in that game (or any game with the character generation rules mostly as written).

Yeah, I can see why that might make the game a bit frustrating, I was grasping at straws to salvage the raw data of the table for a different purpose, the bonus XP idea came from the option to retire a character at tenth level, as presented in the World of Dungeons handout.

If it really makes things too complicated, I'm willing to just set it aside.

Quote
Maybe your tables are quite different than mine,--

No tables, I don't even run any games at all right now. Just from reading the old rules and any perspectives online largely from my perspective as a player. And I'm not enticed by calculative spreadsheets just yet, given that I have had no useful instruction for math or probability to apply to that end. Most of my ideas just extrapolate from common sense reflecting on my own experience combined with many other concise summaries and persuasions. I think I might spot something about a solution for the bows issue if I read this thread in full and keep up with it, but that might take a while.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 07:42:51 PM

Quote from: LordBP on February 06, 2023, 05:26:47 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:12:29 PM

Quote from: Lurkndog on January 30, 2023, 02:46:52 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 30, 2023, 12:25:54 PM
Bows only work in specific circumstances, e.g., scores of bowmen against a marching army, or shoot and run tactics. These are NOT the types of combat you see in dungeons (bows would be terrible in dungeons BTW).

Historically, dungeon crawls don't exist, and conflict is typically out in the open, maybe in a field, or maybe in a forest.

And practically, a standard dungeon with corridors ten feet wide and ten feet tall is spacious enough to use bows and spears in. It might not be ideal, but if I saw five guys with spears marching side by side down a corridor at me, I'd leave immediately.

An actual cave, though? No, I wouldn't even take a spear or a bow into a cave. Too narrow, you might not even be able to get a spear through some twisty places.

Edit: Hell, I probably couldn't get myself through some of the places I went caving as a much younger man.

Yup, agreed, but D&D does dungeons crawls.

Also, longbows in Moldvay can reach up to 100 feet with no penalty. I d'ont see this working in a long corridor and, even in the open, I doubt it would be hard to dodge a missile if you can spot the single archer shooting a single target 100 feet away.

Spears are a different thing IMO. A short spear might work better than a swung weapons in cave...

You would have about half a second to dodge a longbow at 100 feet and it's a pretty flat trajectory for that 100 feet, so might work in a 10x10 corridor.

Half a second? I reckon the "taking the arrow, drawing the bow process, release, travel 100 feet" process would take a lot longer than that, allowing me more than enough time to take cover if not dodge. Especially if I had a shield.

Of course, if the attackers is hidden I'm probably dead against a dagger OR bow... although I would prefer a bow, since if he misses I'll have some time to react. Also, how many times can one stab in a second?

Anyway, that shouldn't be hard to test by someone like shadiversity or lindybeige.

My experience with bows and daggers, as I've said, is limited, although I do think daggers are MUCH easier to hit in my experience.

Half a second is the flight time which you would have to dodge.  The time to draw, aim, fire, and flight time of the arrow would be more around 1-1.5 seconds.

I believe it was standard for longbowmen to shoot between 20-24 arrows per minute for short periods of time, so around 3 seconds per shot.


If you want videos of legit longbows being used, then Tod's Workshop is probably the best channel as he has quite a few videos on it against different types of armor.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TodsWorkshop1/videos

Matt Easton is also pretty good about different weapons and teams up with Tod on some things.

https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria/videos



The thing with stabbing with a dagger is that once you get it in the body, you don't stab again.  You twist and turn the dagger to get the most internal damage you can especially if the opponent is armored as you may not be able to get another stab in past the armor.

Quote from: LordBP on February 07, 2023, 07:05:20 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 07:42:51 PM

Quote from: LordBP on February 06, 2023, 05:26:47 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:12:29 PM

Quote from: Lurkndog on January 30, 2023, 02:46:52 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 30, 2023, 12:25:54 PM
Bows only work in specific circumstances, e.g., scores of bowmen against a marching army, or shoot and run tactics. These are NOT the types of combat you see in dungeons (bows would be terrible in dungeons BTW).

Historically, dungeon crawls don't exist, and conflict is typically out in the open, maybe in a field, or maybe in a forest.

And practically, a standard dungeon with corridors ten feet wide and ten feet tall is spacious enough to use bows and spears in. It might not be ideal, but if I saw five guys with spears marching side by side down a corridor at me, I'd leave immediately.

An actual cave, though? No, I wouldn't even take a spear or a bow into a cave. Too narrow, you might not even be able to get a spear through some twisty places.

Edit: Hell, I probably couldn't get myself through some of the places I went caving as a much younger man.

Yup, agreed, but D&D does dungeons crawls.

Also, longbows in Moldvay can reach up to 100 feet with no penalty. I d'ont see this working in a long corridor and, even in the open, I doubt it would be hard to dodge a missile if you can spot the single archer shooting a single target 100 feet away.

Spears are a different thing IMO. A short spear might work better than a swung weapons in cave...

You would have about half a second to dodge a longbow at 100 feet and it's a pretty flat trajectory for that 100 feet, so might work in a 10x10 corridor.

Half a second? I reckon the "taking the arrow, drawing the bow process, release, travel 100 feet" process would take a lot longer than that, allowing me more than enough time to take cover if not dodge. Especially if I had a shield.

Of course, if the attackers is hidden I'm probably dead against a dagger OR bow... although I would prefer a bow, since if he misses I'll have some time to react. Also, how many times can one stab in a second?

Anyway, that shouldn't be hard to test by someone like shadiversity or lindybeige.

My experience with bows and daggers, as I've said, is limited, although I do think daggers are MUCH easier to hit in my experience.

Half a second is the flight time which you would have to dodge.  The time to draw, aim, fire, and flight time of the arrow would be more around 1-1.5 seconds.

I believe it was standard for longbowmen to shoot between 20-24 arrows per minute for short periods of time, so around 3 seconds per shot.


If you want videos of legit longbows being used, then Tod's Workshop is probably the best channel as he has quite a few videos on it against different types of armor.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TodsWorkshop1/videos

Matt Easton is also pretty good about different weapons and teams up with Tod on some things.

https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria/videos



The thing with stabbing with a dagger is that once you get it in the body, you don't stab again.  You twist and turn the dagger to get the most internal damage you can especially if the opponent is armored as you may not be able to get another stab in past the armor.

Yes, good point. I wasn't even considering armor; I also think it is easier to find a weak spot with a dagger (say, armpits) than a bow. With no armor, however, you could stab a lot in 3 seconds...

These videos are very cool, thanks! One guy hits an arrow in the dummy's "eye" thought the helmet! This is impressive and not something you can do without training IMO - again, unlike a dagger, especially if you opponent is pinned to the ground.

But there are so many circumstances that I don't think we can see a result only using theory. A fake dagger (or short sword etc.) versus blunt arrows shouldn't be impossible to do on YT. The reason why it hasn't been done, maybe, it is because, again, bows are not usually for duels, like in D&D, so this use wouldn't be "historically relevant".

(another video I wanted to make is getting a 4 lb. quarterstaff and trying to fight one handed as 5e suggests... but I'm pretty sure I'd destroy my wrists!)

It is still a good idea for a channel, that I leave here since I wasn't able to start my own! 

Other than that, anyone can do their own experience - try shooting a bow at a target that is say, 30 feet away to see how hard it is. Now imagine a moving target that has 3 second to see what you're doing between shots. I've tried and remain convinced that bows require much more training to become deadly.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 01, 2023, 06:44:47 PM
Slings in capable hands are quite a good weapon, better than many bows.  The trouble is that getting capable with a sling, like the longbow, takes constant practice from someone that starts relatively young. 

When you've got a lot of shepherds in the area that grew up driving off predators with a sling from a young age, you've got a well-trained core of skirmishers ready made.  When you don't, it's a whole lot easier to train some archers using some moderate pull, shorter bows. 

Like the longbow, if a system can reflect the real abilities of the weapon, and offset that with increased training to get there, a sling ought to be rather scary to opponents, as soon as capability is demonstrated.

Spot on! I have trained with both a bow and a sling, and this matches my personal experience. I found the sling terribly difficult to achieve even basic proficiency with compared to the bow. Once I did though, wow. Those stones hit with explosive power.

(Ultimately I stuck with the sling over the bow for my "prepping", since it has the advantage of being easily improvised in minutes, with a practically limitless supply of ammunition readily available).

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 07, 2023, 08:08:39 AM

Quote from: LordBP on February 07, 2023, 07:05:20 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 07:42:51 PM

Quote from: LordBP on February 06, 2023, 05:26:47 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:12:29 PM

Quote from: Lurkndog on January 30, 2023, 02:46:52 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 30, 2023, 12:25:54 PM
Bows only work in specific circumstances, e.g., scores of bowmen against a marching army, or shoot and run tactics. These are NOT the types of combat you see in dungeons (bows would be terrible in dungeons BTW).

Historically, dungeon crawls don't exist, and conflict is typically out in the open, maybe in a field, or maybe in a forest.

And practically, a standard dungeon with corridors ten feet wide and ten feet tall is spacious enough to use bows and spears in. It might not be ideal, but if I saw five guys with spears marching side by side down a corridor at me, I'd leave immediately.

An actual cave, though? No, I wouldn't even take a spear or a bow into a cave. Too narrow, you might not even be able to get a spear through some twisty places.

Edit: Hell, I probably couldn't get myself through some of the places I went caving as a much younger man.

Yup, agreed, but D&D does dungeons crawls.

Also, longbows in Moldvay can reach up to 100 feet with no penalty. I d'ont see this working in a long corridor and, even in the open, I doubt it would be hard to dodge a missile if you can spot the single archer shooting a single target 100 feet away.

Spears are a different thing IMO. A short spear might work better than a swung weapons in cave...

You would have about half a second to dodge a longbow at 100 feet and it's a pretty flat trajectory for that 100 feet, so might work in a 10x10 corridor.

Half a second? I reckon the "taking the arrow, drawing the bow process, release, travel 100 feet" process would take a lot longer than that, allowing me more than enough time to take cover if not dodge. Especially if I had a shield.

Of course, if the attackers is hidden I'm probably dead against a dagger OR bow... although I would prefer a bow, since if he misses I'll have some time to react. Also, how many times can one stab in a second?

Anyway, that shouldn't be hard to test by someone like shadiversity or lindybeige.

My experience with bows and daggers, as I've said, is limited, although I do think daggers are MUCH easier to hit in my experience.

Half a second is the flight time which you would have to dodge.  The time to draw, aim, fire, and flight time of the arrow would be more around 1-1.5 seconds.

I believe it was standard for longbowmen to shoot between 20-24 arrows per minute for short periods of time, so around 3 seconds per shot.


If you want videos of legit longbows being used, then Tod's Workshop is probably the best channel as he has quite a few videos on it against different types of armor.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TodsWorkshop1/videos

Matt Easton is also pretty good about different weapons and teams up with Tod on some things.

https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria/videos



The thing with stabbing with a dagger is that once you get it in the body, you don't stab again.  You twist and turn the dagger to get the most internal damage you can especially if the opponent is armored as you may not be able to get another stab in past the armor.

Yes, good point. I wasn't even considering armor; I also think it is easier to find a weak spot with a dagger (say, armpits) than a bow. With no armor, however, you could stab a lot in 3 seconds...

These videos are very cool, thanks! One guy hits an arrow in the dummy's "eye" thought the helmet! This is impressive and not something you can do without training IMO - again, unlike a dagger, especially if you opponent is pinned to the ground.

But there are so many circumstances that I don't think we can see a result only using theory. A fake dagger (or short sword etc.) versus blunt arrows shouldn't be impossible to do on YT. The reason why it hasn't been done, maybe, it is because, again, bows are not usually for duels, like in D&D, so this use wouldn't be "historically relevant".

(another video I wanted to make is getting a 4 lb. quarterstaff and trying to fight one handed as 5e suggests... but I'm pretty sure I'd destroy my wrists!)

It is still a good idea for a channel, that I leave here since I wasn't able to start my own! 

Other than that, anyone can do their own experience - try shooting a bow at a target that is say, 30 feet away to see how hard it is. Now imagine a moving target that has 3 second to see what you're doing between shots. I've tried and remain convinced that bows require much more training to become deadly.

If you want to see what a very good archer can do with a modern bow, then the below channel has a lot of crazy stuff on it.  Think he has some stuff on older archery also.

https://www.youtube.com/@larsandersen23/videos